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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

Posted on 4 December 2016 by John Hartz

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Story of the Week...

At a time when a huge pulse of uncertainty has been injected into the global project to stop the planet’s warming, scientists have just raised the stakes even further.

In a massive new study published Wednesday in the influential journal Nature, no less than 50 authors from around the world document a so-called climate system “feedback” that, they say, could make global warming considerably worse over the coming decades.

That feedback involves the planet’s soils, which are a massive repository of carbon due to the plants and roots that have grown and died in them, in many cases over vast time periods (plants pull in carbon from the air through photosynthesis and use it to fuel their growth). It has long been feared that as warming increases, the microorganisms living in these soils would respond by very naturally upping their rate of respiration, a process that in turn releases carbon dioxide or methane, leading greenhouse gases.

Toon of the Week...

Quote of the Week...

Climate change minister Shane Rattenbury said the "Davids" were showing the "Goliaths" how it was done.

"This report confirms what I saw at the United Nations conference on climate change in Marrakech, Morocco – it is cities who are taking on climate change and leading the renewable energy charge, even when their federal governments are dragging their heels," Mr Rattenbury said.

"We cannot, and will not, wait for the Prime Minister of Australia or the President of the United States to decide that the long term interests of our communities are more important that the interests of the coal lobby. Instead, cities like Canberra are taking action now."

Phil Plait, author of the Bad Astronomy blog (published in the Slate e-magazine) wrote two blistering critiques of statements made by a Washington lobbysit about the future of climate research and analyses within the NASA under the prospective Trump Administration. Plait cited and linked to The Consensus Project (TCP) in both articles.

In the interview I mention a few things I want to make sure everyone sees. One is that Walker tries to downplay the “climate consensus,” the fact that there is overwhelming agreement among climate scientists that global warming is real and caused by humans. The best overview of this is at Skeptical Science. John Cook—who writes for that site and is also the lead author on one of the many studies about the consensus—also wrote a great article about it for the Conversation.